


The Observation of Trifles

by apiphile



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Manipulation, Repression, because you don't have to be graphic you can just create a mandala of circumlocution, holmes that is not how you flirt, i literally described it like that to someone, i wish i could write as well as i can talk about writing, nothing is more fun than writing repressed pov, old fic being rearchived, this fic contains no trifle, victorians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:02:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes likes to experiment with the contents of his chemistry set for more reasons than solving crimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Observation of Trifles

Watson was of course terribly alarmed when he came back to 221B Baker street to find his companion seemingly lifeless on the hearthrug. 

And he was filled with concern when, on rising from a much-needed rest at the end of a case, he discovered Holmes unnaturally comatose half in and half-out of the bathtub. 

It was worry that consumed him upon uncovering a quite stiff and blue-lipped Holmes slumped over his desk amid the papers and bottles as if he had been dealt a heavy blow to the back of the neck, although by now worry was bedfellow to a thread of exasperation. 

When Holmes collapsed abruptly on the stairs outside their rooms and Watson was compelled by affection, good manners, and the desire to keep this household thoroughfare clear, to scoop up his companion by the armpits and haul him to bed, that was the incident at which Watson's conscientious patience took a beating and gave way to a certain suspicion. 

After the stairwell _incident_ , the good doctor took matters into his own capable hands, and he filleted Holmes's chemistry set, removing this and hiding that, safe in the knowledge that with the infernal clutter and the domestic ineptitude of his colleague, merely removing the bottles and putting them in a drawer where the household bills were kept was precaution enough. As an afterthought he sought out the tin of prepared curare, a rare and potent paralytic from the South American jungles, which Holmes had acquired at great cost and, Watson suspected, through not entirely wholesome means.

Perhaps it was bad luck that this was the moment at which the door to Holmes's room opened, and perhaps it was something closer to the fate which Watson, quite contrary to his colleague's urgings, still found he believed in. Whatever the cause of this synchronicity, Watson abandoned his search and returned to the day's newspapers as if he had never been away from them, aware of a tiny prickle of sweat upon his cuffs and collar. 

Watson lowered the day's news from before his face when Holmes leaned on his doorframe and made a weak noise. "Water, for pity's sake, water." 

"I see the master of scientific discovery is awake."

"Awake and in need of water."

Watson allowed his line of sight to drift slowly from the thicket of his colleague's hair, which was occupying a position close to vertical and which might put the more doting parent in mind of an angry scribble rendered by a small child upon the wall with a piece of coal, and toward the jug of water sitting on the dining table.

"Yes, thank you, that water."

Watson looked at the water for a little longer. It was fresh, and quite cool, and their much-aggrieved landlady had been kind beyond the reach of her usual character in providing him with a small piece of lemon float in it. The water was as refreshing and enticing as any jug of water could be made to look. He was sure that on this morning he would not find himself throwing it at Holmes's head after the very last shred of his patience was ground away. He was calm and composed and at peace with the world. He was also tearing the newspaper by gripping it too tightly.

"WATSON I AM SUFFERING TERRIBLY AND YOU HAVE MY SALVATION AT HAND, WHAT IS _DETAINING_ YOU?" 

"South American curare," Watson said, laying his newspaper on his lap and folding it with the utmost care and precision.

"Please, refrain from cryptic utterances and furnish me with water! My tongue has dried out and my nasal cavity is not performing its intended task." Holmes laid a hand across his face. "And close the curtains and--"

"Fetch it yourself, the jug is seven feet away at most." Watson slammed the newspaper against the table at his elbow with more force than he had intended. 

"Six feet, four and three-quarter inches," Holmes corrected from behind his fingers, his voice thick. "At present that distance is six feet and four inches further than my body will take me. WATSON. THE WATER, IF YOU WOULD BE SO GOOD." 

Watson's skills of observation had before his discharge from Her Majesty's Army been accurate enough for diagnosis; after several years working with Holmes on a number of baffling and sometimes bewildering cases they had grown acute. He was therefore much aggrieved to find himself thinking, without a flaw in his calculations, of how easy it would be to lift the jug and hurl the content at Holmes's wretched face. 

Not only would it be a matter of great ease, it would also be the cause of considerable pleasure and that, Watson thought, sitting straighter than he had been, was why he was not going to give in to the temptation. 

"I'm sure if you fall on your face you will find the last foot or two of your crawl easy enough to bear," he said, instead.

"Does your cruelty know no bounds?" 

"My cruelty is bounded entirely by your deviousness and duplicity, Holmes, why ¬ " Watson took a moment to fill his lungs and slow his speech lest his temper get the better of him, "¬ no, not why. _How_ can you expect me to believe that you need to test _one_ common muscle relaxant so many times at the risk of your own health?" 

"The complexity of finding the right dose--" Holmes began, but his fatigue stripped the wings from his words and gave Watson time to interrupt. 

"What utter _piffle_. Use the dog- I can hardly believe I am suggesting this but _use the bloody dog_. That's what you usually do!" Watson brought himself up short and straightened his waistcoat with tense hands. "No, old cock, I simply cannot believe you. Is there some sort of ... dependency, some degenerate predilection to misuse in this drug?"

"No, mother hen, will you please, I beg of you, the water, I am quite faint--"

"Again," Watson muttered, but he took hold of the jug of water all the same. "No, I think -- if there is no _pleasure_ to be gleaned from persistently injecting yourself with curare, and you can hardly be using the stuff to clear you mind when it reduces you to a drooling, helpless wreck--"

"I can hardly drool when my mouth is so deprived of saliva, Watson, the water if you please." 

"And yet you have no difficulty in talking." 

Holmes crumpled into an untidy heap of frayed dressing-gown and hair that had seen neither comb nor silver-backed brush in a week.

"You're fooling no one," Watson said, weary to the very bone. He tightened his grip on the water jug. 

There came from the bedraggled pile no reply. Watson rose from his chair as slowly as a man who has spotted a tiger in the long grass, and took a step closer to the mortal remains of his colleague, the water jug clasped in his fist. 

As he inched across the six feet and four and three quarter inches between the occasional table and the doorway in which Holmes now reclined, Watson was aware of the ticking of their several clocks, and the _thumpthump_ of the one which had not wholly recovered from being shot at by Holmes during his last spell of despond and lack of direction. He noticed to his consternation that the carpet had become scuffed, and that his breath was no longer regular. 

There had been in Watson's experience many distances which seemed as he travelled them to grow and grow, growing all the time in endless relation to the trepidation or desperation with which he traversed them. The ride back to camp in Afghanistan with a bullet lodged in his shoulder might have been the distance to the moon or further, though he was not conscious for most of it; likewise his footsteps on the oft-abused carpet seemed to him to cover a distance nearer to six miles than six feet. The water jug remained upright and full in his hand. 

"Holmes?" 

Holmes gave no reply. 

"Holmes?"

Watson drummed the tips of his fingers against the doorframe, his water jug weighing heavy in his hand.

"Holmes?"

Well the man _wanted_ water, Watson reasoned, turning his eye from the jug to the forest of uncombed hair beneath him.

He tilted the jug until a thin trickle of water poured from the spout; there was after all no sense in ruining the carpet beyond what Holmes's various experiments and indulgences had wrecked upon it; and once the first splashes found their way by the inexorable call of gravity to the man's face it was a mere tick of the nearest clock until Holmes screwed his face into an unattractive knot and opened an eye.

"I had rather hoped the water would find its way to my mouth, mother hen," he croaked.

"Wait long enough and it will." Watson put the jug on the floor with a loud _click_ of his knees. 

"Perhaps," Holmes said in a weak voice, "you would continue with your torment a little longer until the water has made ingress to my throat?"

"The jug is by your head, Holmes," Watson said. He stepped back from the pitiful pile of limbs to allow more ease of access to the jug.

"My dear Watson," Holmes said in a ghost of his habitual severity, "the jug may, for all I am able to reach for it, be in the Antipodes. I tell you I cannot move my arms."

The clocked ticked with unusual vigor in the silence that followed his words. 

"Nor can I," Holmes added, his gaze resting upon Watson's face piteously, "induce my legs to move." 

"Perhaps you have misjudged the effect of curare in repeated use," Watson suggested with a sigh. He reached for the jug, but thought better of this. "Perhaps," he added, examining the impatience in Holmes's pleading eyes, "I should assist you in returning to bed, as it is quite obvious you are not fit to face the day." 

"Under the circumstances," Holmes agreed, "that might be wise." 

His dressing gown was damp to touch, and whether with clean water or the residue of some distasteful sweat Watson was not able to tell; he had touched far worse in the course of his various duties, and at least the gown did not smell too strongly of opium smoke on this occasion. It was perhaps cause for further concern that he weighed so little, although, Watson felt moved to observe, he was not so very light that moving Holmes back to his bed was not a _sodding inconvenience_.

"Holmes."

"I won't hear a word of it."

"I am going to keep that wretched substance under lock and key."

Too little time had passed since the room's last turn-down for the bed-linen to have the noxious and giddying scent of Holmes-at-repose that it acquired by the end of each week. Watson wrestled with the slippery octopus that his friend's body had become, employing the use of knees, elbows, hands, shoulder, and coarse language in the business of hoisting Holmes into his bed.

"You are a terrible nursemaid," Holmes remarked, once Watson had tucked the linen beneath his chin with finality and firmness meant to convey to his temporary patient how inadvisable it would be for him to take to his feet before proper recovery.

"And you are an insufferable patient. There is nothing to be gained from persistently poisoning yourself with that foul stuff and still you continue." Watson frowned.

"Oh I wouldn't say that."

Watson found that his own limbs had become quite stiff by contrast, and that he had a pressing and urgent need to vacate the room and attend to the coldness in his stomach. "I will leave the water with you."

"It won't do any good." 

"Please do not look at me like that, I have patients to see and I ..." Watson straightened his back, and his neck, and brought to mind the list of names with whom he was supposed to have appointments that day. "... I will _not_ put them off for your self-inflicted miseries, Holmes, stop making that face. I won't do it."

"Watson," Holmes said, when Watson was almost out of the door. His own name struck him between the shoulder-blades like a fist and held him in the doorway. "It is only polite to warn you that my experiments with the effects of this drug _will_ continue ¬"

"¬ you have absolutely no idea what it is doing to you ¬" Watson snapped, rising without grace to lunge at the bait.

"¬ I _must_ be able to induce and recover from complete helplessness within a particular period if I am to-" Holmes broke off and turned his head away. "But I see you are not interested and must only harp on and on about my _health_." 

Watson sighed until he felt all the air must be gone from his body. "I _am_ your doctor, Holmes."


End file.
